The goal of the Department of Philosophy is to enable students to develop thoughtful attitudes toward life and the world through a confrontation with the thought of great philosophers. To treat such problems as the nature of our individual and social lives, the nature of the world in which we live, and the nature of our apprehension of, and response to that world.
All philosophy courses will include a close reading and analysis of primary sources and a substantive writing component.
Our faculty agree on the necessity of having someone wiser than themselves in the classroom at all times. So together with their students they read the Great Books: works from the long shelf of those who challenge us or are clearly our superiors, from Plato, Aristotle, Augustine and Aquinas through Descartes, Shakespeare, Hume, Kant and Nietzsche to Freud, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Lewis and Tolkien, Camus and Solzhenitsyn.
"After studying and teaching philosophy in the U.S., Europe, and Japan for over 14 years, I am convinced that the UNK philosophy department consists of true philosophers who represent the gold standard of public education in America. I would encourage future students to invest their time and energy in pursuing self-knowledge under the guidance of these professors and to witness fellow students follow in their footsteps both on campus and across the world."
